Blood Rose Rebellion

by Rosalyn Eves

  We emerged, blinking, into the grey mist of a street just beyond Saint Mátyás’s Church, the high Gothic tower light against a darker sky. I could hear shouting. As we crossed the square before the church, the shouting intensified. Turning a corner, we found the bulk of Petőfi’s army. A knotted mass of soldiers and revolutionaries struggled before the rather plain, three-story yellow building serving as the prison, crammed into the narrow medieval street. I could not see any safe way through them, but I moved forward anyway, pulled by an instinct I hardly understood.

  As we watched, an invisible hand plucked up a half dozen rebels and flung them against the building opposite the prison with a horrific crack.

  Just ahead of us, a young woman crumpled to the ground. Her neighbor dropped beside her. The utter silence of their falls made them all the more terrifying. A Killing spell? There must be trained Luminate with the soldiers. Only the most powerful Animanti could close the lungs or stop the heart. And the Circle forbade such magic. Except in wartime.

  I stumbled, nearly pulling Noémi down with me.

  The broken Binding had not stopped the Circle. Perhaps it had not even slowed them.

  Two more of Petőfi’s cobbled-together militia fell. Ten paces before me, a young man in the white linen of a serf broke free of the crowd, his hands alight with fire. With a strangled yell, he thrust fireballs into the air. They smashed against the door of the prison in a glorious shower of sparks. Inspired by his success, he drew on more fire. Too much. He cannot hold it all.

  I watched the young man lift his arms—and implode. The fire flashed out. A blackened, smoking hulk tumbled to the ground, smelling distressingly of roast meat. The released magic from the Binding might belong to Luminate and non-Luminate alike, but the untrained could not hope to match trained Luminate warriors.

  Common Austrian soldiers in white and blue regimentals spilled out of the prison gate, fanning toward us. A Luminate spell plowed over us, a wall of icy air freezing Noémi and me where we stood with the others. A red-haired woman in the black and silver of a Luminate commander allowed her lips to curl as she watched.

  My heart shrank. We were too little, too late. The Circle had come, and even a broken Binding couldn’t save us. The cold of the spell crept into my lungs, a knife stab of pain each time I drew breath. All around me, the members of Petőfi’s army fell with military precision as the soldiers slaughtered them. Frozen as they were, it was as easy as shattering icicles on the eaves in winter.

  I raged against the growing ice. I did not want to die. I wanted to feel Gábor’s arms around me again. I wanted to see Papa and James again—even Catherine and Mama. I wanted to raise a stone for Mátyás in a quiet sírkert, a weeping garden.

  I had not killed Mátyás for this.

  I remembered the creatures who’d gathered to watch the breaking, and raged again. Curse Hunger and his failed promise. Damn Pál for his capricious games. I needed their help now.

  I let the anger and need overwhelm me, sweeping through me like ice-laced spring runoff.

  The spell cracked. The redhead who had cast the spell looked astounded, then frightened.

  As the air shifted around us, I shook my cramping fingers. First a current of warmth, then a tingling in my toes that spread through my frozen limbs. And finally, a yearning so strong it was like physical pain. Noémi’s hand tightened on my arm.

  My heart lifted with recognition. I knew only one creature who could call this desire.

  Hunger.

  Light flared through the street, illuminating the rain-drenched cobblestones. Everything wooden caught fire, tinder to an inferno built of need and longing. Hunger flickered into being beside me, his gold eyes blazing.

  My army had arrived.

  “Why didn’t you come sooner?” I asked.

  “I’m called by need,” Hunger said, his eyes intent on the Luminate before us. “Until your need was great, I hadn’t enough power. And the others required feeding.”

  While the Luminate captain faced the new arrivals, shadows fell across the street, winged beings setting down to slaughter. Luminate and Austrian soldiers alike swung away from their human foes, their startled cries turning to screams as the newly freed creatures pierced their hastily spelled wards. A griffin plucked up a silver-haired gentleman in Luminate colors and sprang to the ornamented top of the palace beside the prison, plunging his beak into the man’s chest. I choked and dragged my eyes back to the street before me, where a being of light erupted into stone, crushing a half dozen men beneath his weight. Their screams hung in the close air of the street.

  A high, piercing shriek sounded nearby, and one of the boszorkány sisters rushed by me, cackling to herself. “Put out their eyes, put out their eyes.” She cast me a sly smile as she passed.

  A body slumped against a stone wall nearby. A woman hunkered above the corpse, something birdlike about her movements and the careful way she held her head, her arms bent at her sides. Fire flickered down her hair, and her shapely legs ended incongruously in webbed goose feet. Her lips, when she smiled at me, were bloody.

  Lidérc. I felt again the remembered night pressure on my chest. Lidércnyomás. Nightmare.

  This is what I asked for.

  There would be time later for an accounting of all my guilt, but I had a task to do. I scooped up an abandoned knife from the street, trying to block the memory of the last time I’d held a knife. I tugged Noémi with me and slipped to the side of the street, hugging the wall as I inched toward the open prison door.

  Though I felt exposed and vulnerable, the soldiers judged two girls no threat to them in comparison with the nightmare beasts. From the corner of my eye, I watched a Luminate soldier lift his hands to cast a spell, then stop, perplexed, to stare at his empty palms. At least the broken Binding had won us that much: not all the Luminate had their former power.

  We slid through the doorway into the prison unchallenged. I gripped my knife in my free hand, my heart thudding.

  The entryway was gloomy and cool after the heat of the street fire. No one stirred at our entrance—the soldiers must have all been drawn outside. Voices cried out upstairs and we followed the sound, Noémi clinging to the railing of the stairs as we climbed.

  I peeked through the bars into the first room.

  A man was dead, slumped against the far wall with his throat blown out. His blood splattered the wall in a grim tracery of jagged lace. I recoiled.

  I crept, more cautiously, to the second room. There were three prisoners here. They might have been sleeping, but the dark stains spreading across their clothes suggested otherwise. I recognized a friend of Mátyás’s who had laughed with me and told me I was pretty. I had not believed it possible for my heart to ache so much, pain piled upon pain.

  Noémi caught my sleeve. “I smell blood.”

  “Someone is killing the prisoners.”

  “But why?”

  I had no answer. Perhaps the Circle had planned for this all along, deciding to carry out the death sentences before any rebellion could free the prisoners. Or perhaps the killer acted alone, spurred by misplaced loyalty to Vienna. My legs trembled, and I put one hand against the wall to steady myself. God could not be so cruel, to let me break the Binding and send Hunger’s army just in time, only to see us fail.

  A distant roar from the street reached us, human screams mingled with inhuman screeching.

  A third and fourth cell, on the opposite side of the hall, revealed only more dead. But the blood from some of the wounds still flowed, and one of the men shifted, groaning with pain. Whoever had done this had acted recently.

  I hesitated. The need to hurry overwhelmed me—but I could not simply abandon Noémi.

  “Go, Anna,” Noémi said, reading my reluctance. “I will follow as I can.”

  The hallway before us was empty. I picked up my skirts, and sprinted back the way we’d come and up a flight of stairs, ignoring the sharp pain in my side as the stays of my corset pressed into me.

 
; I paused on the landing. There—halfway down the hall. A shadowed figure aimed a small handgun through the bars and fired. The report was almost lost in the greater din outside.

  I did not let myself consider the madness of facing a man carrying a gun, armed with only my small knife. I padded down the hallway toward the soldier-assassin. He heard me before I reached him and whirled, his teeth bared in a horrible grimace. When he saw me, he laughed.

  “And this is the last hope of the resistance? A girl?” His German was precise and clipped.

  I closed my fingers around my knife. Words boiled up in my mouth: I am not any girl. I am chimera. But I clamped my lips down around them. This was not tea in some fine drawing room. I was not obligated to answer him.

  “Fly true,” I whispered, and launched the dagger.

  I am not sure who was more startled when the blade hit: me or the soldier, who staggered back, his hand coming up to grasp the hilt. He yanked it out of his shoulder. A hit—but not a killing blow. He stalked toward me, a dully gleaming gun in one hand and a bloody knife in the other.

  Now I thought of the madness of meeting a gun with a knife.

  I fell back a pace, fear drying my mouth.

  Behind me, Noémi cried out. Light crackled along the walls of the hall, accompanied by a shouted incantation. The man dropped to the ground, the gun sliding along the floor.

  I whirled. Noémi stood at the top of the stairs, one hand tight on the railing.

  I did not ask her what she’d done.

  Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself. My hands shook. I did not want to approach the corpse, but I needed keys. A hasty patdown of the dead man’s pockets revealed nothing, so I picked up the gun, holding it between two fingers.

  “Here, lady!” Hands thrust through the bars of the door nearest me. “Hála Istennek!” Thank God. “We are saved!”

  “Stand back!” I aimed the gun at the lock and pulled the trigger. The recoil sent shock waves racing up my arm, and I dropped the gun, shaking my stinging fingers. The first prisoner pushed out, pausing only to press a kiss onto my cheek, before scooping up the gun and racing down the hallway, releasing the others.

  I followed him, my heart thumping. Noémi trailed behind me.

  Bodies surged past us, eager for release.

  “Wait!” I cried. “There’s fighting in the streets!”

  A few of the passing faces turned to me with wide grins, promising vengeance on the soldiers who’d held them. Others seemed scarcely to have heard me. Still others paused long enough to catch my hands and squeeze them, or kiss my cheek as the first soldier had done. They smelled of sweat and urine and sickness, but I found them beautiful.

  Noémi slid her arm through mine, and we pressed against the wall to let the prisoners stream past us. A few of the faces were familiar from Café Pilvax, but none of the faces were the ones I sought. Was Gábor one of the slumped bodies on the floor below me? I would not believe it, not until I had to.

  My eyes flickered from face to face with increasing worry. Then—

  “Anna!” William struggled toward me. “I thought I dreamed you.” His gaze slipped past me and lit like torches. “Noémi!”

  His eyes trailed over her burn scars, but he said nothing, only pulled her to him in a tight embrace. “Forgive me?” he whispered.

  I did not hear Noémi’s response. A memory flashed through my mind: not Gábor in Tabán, but Mátyás wrapping me in his arms inside the Binding. Mátyás is dead, justice is gone.

  A wave of grief tore through me, bending me in half and compressing my lungs so I could not breathe. And then warm hands were on my shoulders, a gentle voice saying, “Anna?”

  Gábor stood before me, one of the last of the released prisoners. Though the grief did not recede entirely, its grip lessened. I could breathe again. My eyes devoured his face: his large, dark eyes, his sharp cheekbones, and the strong, lean line of his throat. There were bruises on his cheeks. What had they done to him?

  I flung myself forward. Gábor caught me and groaned, one leg buckling beneath him. I stepped back, frowning. He was hurt.

  “It’s all right,” he said, gasping a little. “It’s an old wound.” And he folded his arms around me. For the first time in days, weeks, months, I felt safe.

  Some small part of me knew the differences between us had not disappeared—but I shut that part away. It was enough, for now, that he was alive. That we were together. That outside in the streets the last of the Austrian army and the Circle’s soldiers were being driven away by Hungarian patriots and otherworldly creatures.

  Gábor’s fingers traced my brow, the tips of my ears, my lips. “I thought I would die without seeing you again.”

  My hands slid up his arms, my fingers tangled in the curls at the back of his neck. “So did I.”

  Then he set his lips to mine, and the warmth of that kiss spread through my body like the balmy comfort of tea. Against all the darkness and death and turmoil of the last few days, his kiss was everything light, everything good. His kiss was life, springing up around me. His kiss was hope, radiating out from this still, perfect center of a new world.

  I kissed him back.

  The street outside the prison, when we finally, reluctantly, emerged was devastating. The Austrian and Luminate soldiers who had guarded the prison were all dead. A handful of Petőfi’s makeshift army and former prisoners remained in the streets, gently lifting the dead and carrying them back to the square before the church, where they would be collected for burial.

  The creatures were gone—only Hunger remained, looking around at the carnage with a slight smile.

  Gábor’s arm around me tightened.

  “Our bargain is at an end, I think,” Hunger said as we approached.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “And thank you.”

  He shrugged, a delicate gesture that was somehow disturbingly human and inhuman at the same time. “I paid a debt.” His eyes fixed on me, and a tug of longing uncurled inside me. I stepped forward, unthinking, shaking off Gábor’s embrace.

  As if this were a signal he’d waited for, Hunger swooped toward me, setting his perfectly carved lips against my forehead. Heat seared through me, and when he pulled away, I gasped. I touched my skin, fully expecting to find blisters, but found only coolness. Hunger laughed. “Fare you well. Perhaps we shall meet again.”

  “Perhaps.” I hoped not.

  There on the street, Hunger shifted, his too-perfect human form elongating, expanding, growing darker—like daylight dissolving into night. A draconian creature, pieced together of shadows and starlight and smelling of brine and smoke, shook itself delicately, one wing tracing a final caress across my cheek. Those sun-bright eyes met mine for a fraction of a second before Hunger launched himself into the air and vanished.

  I could feel Gábor’s eyes on me, asking questions I did not know how to answer.

  William and Noémi drew even with us in the street. William looked around, frowning, as though searching for something. “Where’s Mátyás?”

  The Binding breaks—the thought slipped out reflexively. “Mátyás is dead.”

  “Dead?” Gábor turned to look at me sharply. “But he escaped the prison. We watched him shift and fly through the bars.”

  “He died saving my life.” That was true, though not the whole truth.

  We wound our way toward the Duna. The streets around Buda Castle were crowded and noisy—Hungarian hussars, patriots, former prisoners all milling about in a mood of celebration. As we watched, the Hapsburg colors were lowered and the Hungarian tricolor flag lifted to the ramparts. Not all the creatures had gone after all: a great gold falcon soared above the castle. I wondered if the Lady were nearby, watching.

  It would take time before the city settled into some semblance of normal life, but the signs were promising. Already enterprising women and men were mingling among the crowd, offering trays of rétesek, breads, meat pies, and drink.

  The Binding had broken, and still the world turned o
n.

  Papa had been right.

  1 November 1847, Buda-Pest

  We buried Grandmama on All Saints’ Day.

  The whole of the two cities, Buda and Pest, seemed to throng the streets that day. It was a day of celebration—the Austrian Circle was disbanding; its head, Prince Metternich, had resigned; and the Hapsburgs had signed papers recognizing Hungary’s independence—and a day of mourning. Fog curled around the Buda streets as Noémi, János, and I walked, candles held aloft, toward the cemetery where Grandmama was to be buried beside my grandfather. János guided Noémi, as her sight had not yet returned, though her skin had healed. The streets were full of others with similar vigils, all those candles like so many stars in the mist.

  Temetni tudunk, Noémi had said that morning. We know how to bury our dead. And, indeed, the air itself seemed subdued by grief. No wind blew to brush away the fog, and the moisture clung to our hair, our wool cloaks, our already damp cheeks.

  The cemetery was at the end of a cloistered street. We passed through the wrought-iron gate, beneath the trees stretching bare fingers in supplication to the sky. Someone had swept the browning grass free of leaves, and we stood in silence beside the open pit as the grave workers lowered the burnished mahogany coffin into the ground. I wished my family could be with me, but the burial could not be put off any longer. Though Papa was en route to fetch me, on this afternoon, János, Noémi, and I were the only family to pay tribute.

  I had not seen Pál since he created my portal into the Binding. I wondered if he knew his mother was dead. If he cared.

  I had commissioned a stonemason to carve a monument to Grandmama: an older woman, strong and beautiful in the height of her power, her hands outstretched with a spell. In a few weeks, the monument would grace her grave, but I would be back in England. The mason had also promised to complete a second commission, a young man shifting into a crow. The last táltos in Hungary deserved that much.

  After a brief ceremony, I sat silent with Noémi in the sírkert, the aptly named weeping garden, on a stone bench beneath a chestnut tree, the ground carpeted with fallen nuts. I thought of what I had lost: Grandmama, Mátyás, Lady Berri, those who had died fighting and in the prison. I had gone back to Attila’s Hill to look for Lady Berri’s body, but there was nothing there. I had heard, later, that her oldest daughter had made arrangements for her burial back in England. I thought of what I had won: the creatures’ release, a new future for the country I had come to love, Gábor.